Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Poppy!” Poppy could hear her mother’s voice, but she
couldn’t see anything. The kitchen floor was obscured
by dancing black dots.
“Poppy, are you all right?” Now Poppy felt her mother’s
hands grasping her upper arms, holding her anxiously. The
pain was easing and her vision was coming back.
As she straightened up, she saw James in front of her. His face
was almost expressionless, but Poppy knew him well enough to
recognize the worry in his eyes. He was holding the milk carton,
she realized. He must have caught it on the fly as she dropped
it—amazing reflexes, Poppy thought vaguely. Really amazing.
Phillip was on his feet. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I—don’t know.” Poppy looked around, then shrugged,
embarrassed. Now that she felt better she wished they weren’t
all staring at her so hard. The way to deal with the pain was to
ignore it, to not think about it.
“
- 13 -
Secret Vampire
“It’s just this stupid pain—I think it’s gastrowhatchmacallit.
You know, something I ate.”
Poppy’s mother gave her daughter the barest fraction
of
a shake. “Poppy, this is not gastroenteritis. You were having
some pain before—nearly a month ago, wasn’t it? Is this the
same kind of pain?”
Poppy squirmed uncomfortably. As a matter of fact, the
pain had never really gone away. Somehow, in the excitement
of end-of-the-year activities, she’d managed to disregard it, and
by now she was used to working around it.
“Sort of,” she temporized. “But—”
That was enough for Poppy’s mother. She gave Poppy a
little squeeze and headed for the kitchen telephone. “I know
you don’t like doctors, but I’m calling Dr. Franklin. I want him
to take a look at you. This isn’t something we can ignore.”
“Oh, Mom, it’s vacation. . . .”
Her mother covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Poppy,
this is nonnegotiable. Go get dressed.”
Poppy groaned, but she could see it was no use. She beckoned
to James, who was looking thoughtfully
into a middle distance.
“Let’s at least listen to the CD before I have to go.”
He glanced at the CD as if he’d forgotten it, and put down
the milk carton. Phillip followed them into the hallway.
“Hey, buddy, you wait out here while she gets dressed.”
James barely turned. “Get a life, Phil,” he said almost
absently.
- 14 -
L.J. Smith
“Just keep your hands off my sister, you deve.”
Poppy just shook her head as she went into her room. As
if James cared about seeing her undressed. If only, she thought
grimly, pulling a pair of shorts out of a drawer. She stepped
into them, still shaking her head. James was her best friend,
her very best friend, and she was his. But he’d never shown
even the slightest desire to get his hands on her. Sometimes
she
wondered if he realized she was a girl.
Someday I’m going to make him see, she thought, and
shouted out the door for him.
James came in and smiled at her. It was a smile other people
rarely saw, not a taunting or ironic grin, but a nice little smile,
slightly crooked.
“Sorry about the doctor thing,” Poppy said.
“No. You should go.” James gave her a keen glance. “Your
mom’s right, you know. This has been going on way too long.
You’ve lost weight; it’s keeping
you up at night—”
Poppy looked at him, startled. She hadn’t told anybody
about how the pain was worse at night, not even James. But—
sometimes James just knew things. As if he could read her
mind.
“I just know you, that’s all,” he said, and then gave her a mischievous
sideways glance as she stared at him. He unwrapped
the CD.
Poppy shrugged and flopped on her bed, staring at the
ceiling. “Anyway, I wish Mom would let me have one day of
- 15 -
Secret Vampire
vacation,” she said. She craned her neck to look at James speculatively.
“I wish I had a mom like yours. Mine’s always worrying
and trying to fix me.”
“And mine doesn’t really care if I come or go. So which is
worse?” James said wryly.
“Your parents let you have your own apartment.”
“In a building they own. Because it’s cheaper than hiring
a manager.” James shook his head, his eyes on the CD he was
putting in the player. “Don’t knock your parents, kid. You’re
luckier than you know.”
Poppy thought about that as the CD started. She and James
both liked trance—the underground electronic
sound that had
come from Europe. James liked the techno beat. Poppy loved
it because it was real music, raw and unpasteurized, made by
people who believed in it. People who had the passion, not
people
who had the money.
Besides, world music made her feel a part of other places.
She loved the differentness of it, the alienness.
Come to think of it, maybe that was what she liked about
James, too. His differentness. She tilted her head to look at him
as the strange rhythms of Burundi
drumming filled the air.
She knew James better than anyone, but there was always
something, something about him that was closed off to her.
Something about him that nobody could reach.
Other people took it for arrogance, or coldness, or aloofness,
but it wasn’t really any of those things. It was just—
- 16 -
L.J. Smith
differentness. He was more different than any of the exchange
students at school. Time after time, Poppy felt she had almost
put her finger on the difference, but it always slipped away.
And more than once, especially late at night when they were
listening to music or watching the ocean, she’d felt he was
about to tell her.
And she’d always felt that if he did tell her, it would be
something important, something as shocking
and lovely as
having a stray cat speak to her.
Just now she looked at James, at his clean, carven profile
and at the brown waves of hair on his forehead,
and thought,
He looks sad.
“Jamie, nothing’s wrong, is it? I mean, at home, or anything?”
She was the only person on the planet allowed to call
him Jamie. Not even Jacklyn or Michaela had ever tried that.
“What could be wrong at home?” he said, with a smile
that didn’t reach his eyes. Then he shook his head dismissively.
“Don’t worry about it, Poppy. It’s nothing important—just a
relative threatening to visit. An unwanted relative.” Then the
smile did reach his eyes, glinting there. “Or maybe I’m just
worried about you,” he said.
Poppy started to say, “Oh, as if, ” but instead she found
herself saying, oddly, “Are you really?”
Her seriousness seemed to strike some chord. His smile
disappeared, and Poppy found that they were simply looking
at each other, without any insulating humor between them.
- 17 -
Secret Vampire
Just gazing into each other’s eyes. James looked uncertain,
almost vulnerable.
“Poppy—”
Poppy swallowed. “Yes?”
He opened his mouth—and then he got up abruptly and
went to adjust her 170-watt Tall-boy speakers. When he turned
back, his gray eyes were dark and fathomless.
“Sure, if you were really sick, I’d be worried,” he said lightly.
“That’s what friends are for, right?”
Poppy deflated. “Right,” she said wistfully, and then gave
him a determined smile.
“But you’re not sick,” he said. “It’s just something you
need to get taken care of. The doctor’ll probably give you
some antibiotics or something—with a big needle,” he added
wickedly.
“Oh, shut up,” Poppy said. He knew she was terrified
of
injections. Just the thought of a needle entering
her skin . . .
“Here comes your mom,” James said, glancing at the door,
which was ajar. Poppy didn’t see how he could hear anybody
coming—the music was loud and the hallway was carpeted.
But an instant later her mother pushed the door open.
“All right, sweetheart,” she said briskly. “Dr. Franklin says
come right in. I’m sorry, James, but I’m going to have to take
Poppy away.”
“That’s okay. I can come back this afternoon.”
Poppy knew when she was defeated. She allowed her
- 18 -
L.J. Smith
mother to tow her to the garage, ignoring James’s miming of
someone receiving a large injection.
An hour later she was lying on Dr. Franklin’s examining
table, eyes politely averted as his gentle fingers
probed her
abdomen. Dr. Franklin was tall, lean, and graying, with the
air of a country doctor. Somebody
you could trust absolutely.
“The pain is here?” he said.
“Yeah—but it sort of goes into my back. Or maybe I just
pulled a muscle back there or something. . . .”
The gentle, probing fingers moved, then stopped. Dr.
Franklin’s face changed. And somehow, in that moment,
Poppy knew it wasn’t a pulled muscle. It wasn’t an upset
stomach; it wasn’t anything simple; and things were about to
change forever.
All Dr. Franklin said was, “You know, I’d like to arrange for a
test on this.”
His voice was dry and thoughtful, but panic curled through
Poppy anyway. She couldn’t explain what was happening inside
her—some sort of dreadful premonition, like a black pit opening
in the ground in front of her.
“Why?” her mother was asking the doctor.
“Well.” Dr. Franklin smiled and pushed his glasses up.
He tapped two fingers on the examining table. “Just as part of
a process of elimination, really. Poppy says she’s been having
- 19 -
Secret Vampire
pain in the upper abdomen, pain that radiates to her back,
pain that’s worse at night. She’s lost her appetite recently,
and she’s lost weight. And her gallbladder is palpable—that
means I can feel that it’s enlarged. Now, those are symptoms
of a lot of things, and a sonogram will help rule out some
of them.”
Poppy calmed down. She couldn’t remember what a
gallbladder did but she was pretty sure she didn’t need it.
Anything involving an organ with such a silly name couldn’t
be serious. Dr. Franklin was going on, talking about the
pancreas and pancreatitis and palpable livers, and Poppy’s
mother was nodding as if she understood. Poppy didn’t
understand, but the panic was gone. It was as if a cover had
been whisked neatly over the black pit, leaving no sign that
it had ever been there.
“You can get the sonogram done at Children’s Hospital
across the street,” Dr. Franklin was saying. “Come back here
after it’s finished.”
Poppy’s mother was nodding, calm, serious, and efficient.
Like Phil. Or Cliff. Okay, we’ll get this taken care of.
Poppy felt just slightly important. Nobody she knew had
been to a hospital for tests.
Her mother ruffled her hair as they walked out of Dr.
Franklin’s office. “Well, Poppet. What have you done to yourself
now?”
Poppy smiled impishly. She was fully recovered from her
- 20 -
L.J. Smith
earlier worry. “Maybe I’ll have to have an operation and I’ll
have an interesting scar,” she said, to amuse her mother.
“Let’s hope not,” her mother said, unamused.
The Suzanne G. Monteforte Children’s Hospital was a
handsome gray building with sinuous curves and giant picture
windows. Poppy looked thoughtfully
into the gift shop as they
passed. It was clearly a kid’s gift shop, full of rainbow Slinkys
and stuffed animals that a visiting adult could buy as a lastminute
present.
A girl came out of the shop. She was a little older than
Poppy, maybe seventeen or eighteen. She was pretty, with an
expertly made-up face—and a cute bandanna which didn’t
quite conceal the fact that she had no hair. She looked happy,
round-cheeked, with earrings dangling jauntily beneath the
bandanna—
but Poppy felt a stab of sympathy.
Sympathy . . . and fear. That girl was really sick. Which
was what hospitals were for, of course—for really sick people.
Suddenly Poppy wanted to get her own tests over with and get
out of here.
The sonogram wasn’t painful, but it was vaguely disturbing.
A technician smeared some kind of jelly over Poppy’s
middle, then ran a cold scanner over it, shooting sound waves
into her, taking pictures of her insides. Poppy found her mind
returning to the pretty girl with no hair.
To distract herself, she thought about James. And for some
reason what came to mind was the first time she’d seen James,
- 21 -
Secret Vampire
the day he came to kindergarten.
He’d been a pale, slight boy
with big gray eyes and something subtly weird about him that
made the bigger boys start picking on him immediately. On
the playground they ganged up on him like hounds around a
fox—until Poppy saw what was happening.
Even at five she’d had a great right hook. She’d burst into
the group, slapping faces and kicking shins until the big boys
went running. Then she’d turned to James.
“Wanna be friends?”
After a brief hesitation he’d nodded shyly. There had been
something oddly sweet in his smile.
But Poppy had soon found that her new friend was strange
in small ways. When the class lizard died, he’d picked up the
corpse without revulsion and asked Poppy if she wanted to
hold it. The teacher had been horrified.
He knew where to find dead animals, too—he’d shown her
a vacant lot where several rabbit carcasses lay in the tall brown
grass. He was matter-of-fact about it.
When he got older, the big kids stopped picking on him.
He grew up to be as tall as any of them, and surprisingly
strong and quick—and he developed a reputation for being
tough and dangerous. When he got angry, something almost
frightening shone in his gray eyes.
He never got angry with Poppy, though. They’d remained
best friends all these years. When they’d reached junior high,
he’d started having girlfriends—all the girls at school wanted
- 22 -
L.J. Smith
him—but he never kept any of them long. And he never
confided in them; to them he was a mysterious, secretive bad
boy. Only Poppy saw the other side of him, the vulnerable,
caring
side.
“Okay,” the technician said, bringing Poppy back to the
present with a jerk. “You’re done; let’s wipe this jelly off you.”
“So what did it show?” Poppy asked, glancing up at the
monitor.
“Oh, your own doctor will tell you that. The radiologist
will read the results and call them over to your doctor’s office.”
The technician’s voice was absolutely
neutral—so neutral that
Poppy looked at her sharply.
Back in Dr. Franklin’s office, Poppy fidgeted while her
mother paged through out-of-date magazines. When the nurse
said “Mrs. Hilgard,” they both stood up.
“Uh—no,” the nurse said, looking flustered. “Mrs. Hilgard,
the doctor just wants to see you for a minute—
alone.”
Poppy and her mother looked at each other. Then, slowly,
Poppy’s mother put down her People magazine
and followed
the nurse.
Poppy stared after her.
Now, what on earth . . . Dr. Franklin had never done that
before.
Poppy realized that her heart was beating hard. Not fast,
just hard. Bang . . . bang . . . bang, in the middle of her chest,
shaking her insides. Making her feel unreal and giddy.
- 23 -
Secret Vampire
Don’t think about it. It’s probably nothing. Read a magazine.
But her fingers didn’t seem to work properly. When she
finally got the magazine open, her eyes ran over the words
without delivering them to her brain.
What are they talking about in there? What’s going on? It’s
been so long. . . .
It kept getting longer. As Poppy waited, she found herself
vacillating between two modes of thought. 1) Nothing
serious
was wrong with her and her mother was going to
come out and laugh at her for even imagining there was,
and 2) Something awful was wrong with her and she was
going to have to go through some dreadful treatment to get
well. The covered
pit and the open pit. When the pit was
covered, it seemed laughable, and she felt embarrassed for
having
such melodramatic thoughts. But when it was open,
she felt as if all her life before this had been a dream, and
now she was hitting hard reality at last.
I wish I could call James, she thought.
At last the nurse said, “Poppy? Come on in.”
Dr. Franklin’s office was wood-paneled, with certificates
and diplomas hanging on the walls. Poppy sat down in a
leather chair and tried not to be too obvious about scanning
her mother’s face.
Her mother looked . . . too calm. Calm with strain underneath.
She was smiling, but it was an odd, slightly unsteady
smile.
- 24 -
L.J. Smith
Oh, God, Poppy thought. Something is going on.
“Now, there’s no cause for alarm,” the doctor said, and
immediately Poppy became more alarmed. Her palms stuck to
the leather of the chair arms.
“Something showed up in your sonogram that’s a little
unusual, and I’d like to do a couple of other tests,” Dr. Franklin
said, his voice slow and measured,
soothing. “One of the tests
requires that you fast from midnight the day before you take it.
But your mom says you didn’t eat breakfast today.”
Poppy said mechanically, “I ate one Frosted Flake.”
“One Frosted Flake? Well, I think we can count that as
fasting. We’ll do the tests today, and I think it’s best to admit
you to the hospital for them. Now, the tests are called a CAT
scan and an ERCP—that’s short for something even I can’t
pronounce.” He smiled. Poppy just stared at him.
“There’s nothing frightening about either of these tests,”
he said gently. “The CAT scan is like an X ray. The ERCP
involves passing a tube down the throat, through the stomach,
and into the pancreas. Then we inject into the tube a liquid
that will show up on X rays . . .”
His mouth kept moving, but Poppy had stopped hearing
the words. She was more frightened than she could remember
being in a long time.
I was just joking about the interesting scar, she thought. I
don’t want a real disease. I don’t want to go to the hospital, and
I don’t want any tubes down my throat.
- 25 -
Secret Vampire
She looked at her mother in mute appeal. Her mother
took her hand.
“It’s no big deal, sweetheart. We’ll just go home and pack a
few things for you; then we’ll come back.”
“I have to go into the hospital today?”
“I think that would be best,” Dr. Franklin said.
Poppy’s hand tightened on her mother’s. Her mind was a
humming blank.
When they left the office, her mother said, “Thank you,
Owen.” Poppy had never heard her call Dr. Franklin by his
first name before.
Poppy didn’t ask why. She didn’t say anything as they
walked out of the building and got in the car. As they drove
home, her mother began to chat about ordinary things in a
light, calm voice, and Poppy made herself answer. Pretending
that everything was normal, while all the time the terrible
sick feeling raged inside her.
It was only when they were in her bedroom, packing
mystery
books and cotton pajamas into a small suitcase, that she
asked almost casually, “So what exactly does he think is wrong
with me?”
Her mother didn’t answer immediately. She was looking
down at the suitcase. Finally she said, “Well, he’s not sure anything
is wrong.”
“But what does he think? He must think something.
And
he was talking about my pancreas—I mean, it sounds like he
- 26 -
L.J. Smith
thinks there’s something wrong with my pancreas. I thought
he was looking at my gallbladder or whatever. I didn’t even
know that my pancreas was involved in this. . . .”
“Sweetheart.” Her mother took her by the shoulders,
and
Poppy realized she was getting a little overwrought.
She took
a deep breath.
“I just want to know the truth, okay? I just want to have
some idea of what’s going on. It’s my body, and I’ve got a right
to know what they’re looking for—don’t I?”
It was a brave speech, and she didn’t mean any of it. What
she really wanted was reassurance, a promise
that Dr. Franklin
was looking for something trivial.
That the worst that could
happen wouldn’t be so bad. She didn’t get it.
“Yes, you do have a right to know.” Her mother let a
long breath out, then spoke slowly. “Poppy, Dr. Franklin was
concerned
about your pancreas all along. Apparently things
can happen in the pancreas that cause changes in other
organs, like the gallbladder
and liver. When Dr. Franklin
felt those changes, he decided to check things out with a
sonogram.”
Poppy swallowed. “And he said the sonogram was—
unusual. How unusual?”
“Poppy, this is all preliminary. . . .” Her mother saw her
face and sighed. She went on reluctantly. “The sonogram
showed that there might be something
in your pancreas.
Something that shouldn’t be there. That’s why Dr. Franklin
- 27 -
Secret Vampire
wants the other tests; they’ll tell us for sure. But—”
“Something that shouldn’t be there? You mean . . . like
a tumor? Like . . . cancer?” Strange, it was hard to say the
words.
Her mother nodded once. “Yes. Like cancer.”
21-12-09, 07:39 PM
Secret Vampire by L.J. SMITH
ÌÏíÏ ãæÇÖíÚ ÞÓã ÇáÇÑÔíÝ
ÇáÚÑÖ ÇáÚÇÏí
